Overview

Opava Land Archive is in the process of digitizing parish registers (church records) and making them available online through the digital archive. In addition, FamilySearch Historical Records has digitized images of the church records in this archive. To use these archives you need these skills:

1. An understanding of what to look for in parish registers.

2. How to navigate the archives to find the records of the parish you want, both from the archive website and the FamilySearch Historical website.

3. The ability to read a few Czech, German, or Latin words that are found in the records. You do not have to be fluent in any of these languages!

4. A planned strategy for finding all the members of a family.

Parish Registers and the Information They Contain

Parish registers contain baptism (birth), marriage, and burial (death) information and are definitely the best source for identifying one’s relatives in the Czech Republic.

Sometimes, baptisms, marriages, and burials are kept for all villages in a parish, for each year. Other times, each village has its own section of baptisms, marriages, and burials, listed chronologically. Some records are in preprinted forms. Most records include indexes. While the books have been kept to the present, they are only available for research through about 1910 because of privacy laws. The parish registers cover a majority of the population.
Important details that will help identify your ancestors:

Baptismal entries usually contain the following: names of the child, parents, godparents, and sometimes grandparents; date and place of birth and baptism; residence and religion of the parents; whether the child was legitimate or illegitimate.

Marriage entries usually contain the following: names of the bride, groom, their parents, witnesses, and sometimes grandparents; date and place of marriage; residence and religion of the bride and groom; age, previous marital status, and occupation of bride and groom.

Burial entries usually contain the following: names of the deceased and spouse/parents; date and place of death and burial; residence and religion of the deceased; age and cause of death of the deceased.

Czech Republic Church Books, 1552-1963

2. Fill in the requested information in the initial search page. This search will return a list of possible matches. <br.

3. Compare the information about the ancestors in the list to what you already know about your ancestors to determine if this is the correct family or person. You may need to compare the information about more than one person to find your ancestor.

4. Be aware there may be inaccuracies such as altered spellings, misinterpretations, and optical character recognition errors if the information was scanned.

To browse the images in this collection, you will need to follow this series of links:

7. Search the collection by image, comparing the information with what you already know about your ancestors to determine which one is your ancestor. You may need to compare the information about more than one person to make this determination.

8. If indexes are available in the images, check these for the name first. Indexes are usually located at the beginning of a group of images or at the end. They can also be found in individual folders. Find your ancestor's name and look for the locator information next to the name (such as page, entry, or certificate number). This will help you find the record you are looking for in the collection.

6. Search the collection by image, comparing the information with what you already know about your ancestors to determine which one is your ancestor. You may need to compare the information about more than one person to make this determination.

7. If indexes are available in the images, check these for the name first. Indexes are usually located at the beginning of a group of images or at the end. They can also be found in individual folders. Find your ancestor's name and look for the locator information next to the name (such as page, entry, or certificate number). This will help you find the record you are looking for in the collection.

Reading the Records

Reading the records will be easier than you might think! Parish registers use only a few basic terms in any language, such as: father, mother, son, daughter, born, baptized, married, died. Personal and place names don't need to be translated, and dates often look very similar to English. More recent records are in columns, and by translating the column title, one can then easily read the pages. The basic vocabulary can be memorized for easy recognition, and other terms, such as occupations and relationships can be quickly translated, by consulting a genealogical word list.

Czech was not recognized as an official language until 1877 in Bohemia and 1905 in Moravia. Except for modern records of the 1900s, records in the Czech Republic were written mostly in Latin and German. These materials for learning to read German, Latin, and old Gothic script will be helpful in preparing you to read Czech church records.